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About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in jo... (More)

About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in journalism. Though my first love is journalism, food is a close second. I am constantly on the lookout for new restaurants to try, building an ever-expanding "to eat" list. As a journalist, I'm always trolling news sources and social media websites with an eye for local food news, from restaurant openings and closings to emerging food trends. When I was a teenager growing up in Menlo Park, I always drove up to the city on weekends with the singular purpose of finding a better meal than I could at home. But in the past year or so, the Peninsula's food culture has been totally transformed, with many new restaurants opening and a continuous stream of San Francisco restaurants coming south to open Peninsula outposts. Don't navigate this food boom hungry and alone! Feed me your tips on new chefs and eats and together we'll share them with the broader community. (Hide)

Downtown Redwood City gets Japanese kaiseki restaurant

A kaiseki restaurant, devoting to serving traditional Japanese multi-course meals, is in a soft opening phase at 921 Main St. in Redwood City.

Hitoshi Tagawa soft opened Ranzan, his first-ever restaurant, in late August and is continuing to serve limited menus on a reservations-only basis until a grand opening in January.

Ranzan serves kaiseki, elaborate meals with as many as 16 courses. Photo by Elena Kadvany.

Tagawa was born in Japan but raised on the East Coast. He returned to Japan as an adult for six years of culinary training near Kobe, he said in an interview.

He decided to open a kaiseki restaurant because it "incorporates every aspect of Japanese food" — sashimi, soup, fried fish, something grilled, something steamed, delicacies and dessert. The menus are driven by the seasons in Japan.

"Our concept is to show everybody Japanese culture through Japanese food," Tagawa said.

For dinner at Ranzan, there are three tiers of kaiseki, each named for a location in Japan. "Ohara" is a 13-course meal for $128; "Kibune," 15 courses for $158; and "Takao," 16 courses for $188. The courses include vegetables, soup, sashimi, rice and dishes that exemplify different cooking methods (simmered, grilled, steamed, fried, pickled). Photos posted on Yelp show dishes like steamed Japanese squash, monk liver in ponzu sauce, cured sea bream and duck breast simmered in dashi.

The two latter dinner menus include a rotating "luxury" dish, Tagawa said, which right now is shikaro, the sperm of a cod fish. He salts and then grills it.

"It's creamy, velvety with a lot of umami," he said.

For lunch, Ranzan offers three pared-down options. Tenose sushi ($48) allows customers to roll their own sushi from 12 different ingredients. Ichi jyu San sai comes with one soup, one main and two supplemental dishes. Shoukado is "an elegant way of saying bento box," with dishes that are simmered, grilled, steamed, fried and/or sashimi, the Ranzan website states.

The restaurant's name was inspired by the Japanese characters for Arashiyama, a popular destination near Kyoto were Tagawa's business partner first ate kaiseki as a young boy, Tagawa said. The partner, who did not want to be named, went on to open several kaiseki restaurants in Japan.

Tagawa plans to expand the menus and offer walk-ins for lunch after the grand opening in January. He'd like to offer walk-ins for dinner but the elaborate menus make it difficult to serve on the fly.

"If people reserve (tables), we can bring out 100 percent of what we can do," he said.

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Short story writers wanted!
The 33rd Annual Palo Alto Weekly Short Story Contest is now accepting entries for Adult, Young Adult (15-17) and Teen (12-14) categories. Send us your short story (2,500 words or less) and entry form by March 29. First, Second and Third Place prizes awarded in each category.